Quantified Perception Blog

A quick analysis of the 2015 SOTU Address 

 Lately, the State of the Union speech has been getting more and more quantitative analysis – the Washington Post today has time frames for how long the President spoke about education, immigration, economics, and other major topics compare to last year  (Example: 2015, 25:06 minutes on economic opportunity versus 8:23 in 2014.) There are graphs and bubbles, maps and timelines, depicting how times and presidents have changed.

Quantified Perception has been following the semantic content of the SOTU for several years, has a slightly different spin, looking at the words from the President. This analysis uses the transcript of the speech, rather than the prepared text. There are minor differences between what was written and what was said.

There was a lot of “we” used last night – “we are,” “we can,”, “we need.” A total of 136 “we”’s this year, versus only 91 in 2014, plus an additional 28 “we’ve” and “we’re.” (19 in 2014)  Apparently we are more cohesive after the divisive mid-term campaigns and elections. There was also a lot of “new” and “more” last night. The ten repetitions of “this congress” were mostly positive or neutral, not particularly accusatory, supporting the notion of greater bipartisan cooperation, in the mind of the President, at least. And he was conciliatory in explaining “that’s why” for many of the steps moving forward.

“Surely we can” show more comity in politics than has become the norm throughout his six years so far. We are, after all, a “strong tight nit family” – “all of us.”

“Surely we can agree” that “middle class economics” should get mentioned, although this is the first time Obama has raised it using that particular phrase In a SOTU.

Phrase	Count	Adjusted Count
we are	24	72
we can	14	42
we need to	7	42
more	41	41
new	41	41
for the first time	4	40
strong tight knit family	4	40
we need	12	36
surely we can	6	36
will	34	34
I want	11	33
that’s why	11	33
this congress	10	30
all of us	5	30
middle class economics	5	30
surely we can agree	3	30
we believed we could	3	30